One Piece to Blue Lock: Complete list of every major manga on Golden Week break and when they'll return

With the Golden Week holiday beginning in Japan, prominent manga like Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece and Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura’s Blue Lock will be on a forced break. More specifically, major manga publishers like Shueisha and Kodansha will put their biggest magazines, like Weekly Shonen Jump and Weekly Shonen Magazine, respectively, on break.

This affects many more series than just those above from both publishers. To name a few, series like Takeru Hokazono’s Kagurabachi, Kouji Miura’s Blue Box, and Kei Kurumazaki and Sotaro Nishii’s Embers will be on a one-week break. For those series published by Shueisha, this release information has been confirmed via official sources like MANGA Plus, while unofficial but trustworthy sources corroborate others’ info.

One Piece and most other series will officially return in the second full calendar week of May, while others, such as Blue Lock, are timing their breaks with a return for May’s first whole week. Follow along as this article entirely breaks down every major manga series going on break for Golden Week, when they’ll return, and more.

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Japan's Golden Week holiday, explained

Japan’s Golden Week holiday is a roughly week-long stretch in late April through early May that contains several different national holidays. These are Showa Day, Constitution Memorial Day, Greenery Day, and Children’s Day. The holiday starts each year on April 29 and runs through May 5, with Showa Day starting the stretch and Children’s Day ending it.

The collective Golden Week holiday name was first created by the managing director of Daiei Film Co., Ltd. in 1951. The term was born because a film screening recorded higher ticket sales during the holiday-filled week than at any other time of the year. Other leisure-based industries and general travel rates also experience spikes in revenue during the holiday week.

The Golden Week name was inspired by the Japanese radio lingo term “golden time,” which describes periods with the highest listener ratings. Currently, many Japanese citizens schedule paid time off for the holiday, with many companies closing down completely to give employees time off. Major players in the manga industry, such as Shueisha and Kodansha, notably enforce publication breaks to accommodate this time off.

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One Piece, Blue Lock, and other major series on break, and when they’ll return, explained

The biggest manga series affected by the Golden Week publisher breaks will be those serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump and Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine. The most notable names from the latter magazine include the aforementioned Blue Lock, Nakaba Suzuki’s Four Knights of the Apocalypse, Kei Urana’s Gachiakuta, and Reiji Miyajima’s Rent-A-Girlfriend.

Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump has many notable series on break. One Piece, Kagurabachi, Blue Box, and Embers scratch this surface. Also on break will be Yuto Suzuki’s Sakamoto Days, Tatsuya Suganuma’s Nice Prison, Osamu Nishi and Shiro Usazaki’s Ichi the Witch, Masaoki Shindo’s RuriDragon, Genki Ono’s Hima-Ten!, Shoichi Usui’s Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi, and Ippon Takegushi and Santa Mitarashi’s Shinobi Undercover.

Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump will return with its next issue at 12 AM Japanese Standard Time (JST) on Monday, May 12, 2025. Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine is currently slated to return at 12 AM JST on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Most international readers will likewise see the above-named series return with new issues sometime on Sunday, May 11, and Tuesday, May 5, respectively.

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Related links

• One Piece chapter 1148 release date and time
• One Piece: Major predictions for chapter 1148 spoilers
• Blue Lock chapter 301 release date and time
• Blue Lock: Major predictions for Chapter 301 spoilers